


angel, angel, down we go together

by stelladown



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Hospitalization, Lucid Dreaming, M/M, Major Character Injury, Mental Breakdown, Mental Institutions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-29
Updated: 2013-09-03
Packaged: 2017-12-21 18:04:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/903246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stelladown/pseuds/stelladown
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hannibal is taken from the Hobbs' home in cuffs; Will leaves in the back of an ambulance.  each of them is scarred.  a "love" story from lockdown.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this is a reimagining post-'Savoureux' if the Red Dragon reveal had happened in that kitchen - as in, the scales fall from Will's eyes, then Hannibal guts him and, for his trouble, gets taken into custody. 
> 
> tags will be updated along with the story.

 

* * *

 

I feel the pain of everyone  
Then I feel nothing  
\- dinosaur jr

 

* * *

 

Will is standing on his father’s dock, watching seagulls dance over his very first jon boat with the 1983 Mercury outboard. The sun’s reflection is bright enough to make him squint; the air feels like one of those sticky late-summer storms rolling in from the Gulf, sweat-heavy and damp under his shirt. He hasn’t seen this place in decades. Nothing’s changed, not even the scum line on the boat’s hull or the rope swing tied low on the birch where he used to send himself flying into the ocean.

It’s a postcard-perfect day. Will isn’t thinking about Katrina or how it is that he’s standing here after so many years. He wants to get his feet wet. 

A thick breeze blows around him, and something starts to itch. Shading his eyes against the sun, he reaches under his shirt and his fingers brush against a threaded hook caught in his navel. A little blood on his fingertips. He tugs at the fly line coming from his chest, watches it glint from all the way down at the end of the dock, rippling in the water. This is backwards, he thinks – the rod’s buried in the sea and I’m stuck in my own cast. 

Impossible force reeling him in now, dragging him forward until he stumbles and his knees scrape over the planks, skidding towards the edge but he doesn’t want to go over. 

“They pulled a little boy out of Point Cadet last month,” his father reminding him. “Your age.” 

The hook is tearing a straight line up between his ribs, sticking in his breastbone, and Will is on his hands and knees with blood streaming over the dock and into the cracks in the cedarwood, splinters rough inside the open wound. Will sucks in a breath. Don’t pull against the drag, he thinks. 

“Stick him right under the tail there and run him up from the belly flap to the gills – there you go.” His father behind him. “Now put your hand up in him and pull his insides out.”

Will is holding his insides. He wants to put them in the bucket where the fish guts go, but he can’t find it, and the water is so close to his face now.

Will opens his mouth to ask Dad to help him – _I think I hurt myself_ – and then there are gloved fingers under his tongue pulling his jaw down, plastic snaking into the back of his throat, snow drifting against his cheek and blue-red lights flashing, garbled voices – he is moving backwards breathing through a tube attached to a balloon – huge gauze pads tied around his stomach, needle in his arm –

“I got esophageal,” someone says, “bag the blue one - “

Five more seconds of consciousness, and then the pain starts. 

 

* * *

 

This is not the first time Will has been in surgery, according to his chart. The third-year resident who admits him unpeels the bloodsoaked sterile dressing from Will’s stomach and takes a step backwards, turning a close shade of green to her scrubs. No one has seen anything like it. One of the EMTs from the airlift snaps a surreptitious photo of Will’s Betadine-stained abdominal cavity in the middle of the commotion, saved for bragging rights later. 

“Who wants sausage,” the Chief of Trauma asks rhetorically in the OR.

Six hours later, the surgeon gets a round of applause from the line staff when he walks out into the hallway, Will’s body behind him shrouded by a tangle of nurses, curtains, Telfa gauze and catheters. 

Will is a once-in-a-lifetime case. Will is a miracle. 

Will is asleep for days and days. The TV in the corner over his bed runs the same headline story on mute, the screen flashing on his unresponsive face: _BREAKING: SUSPECT DETAINED IN “CHESAPEAKE RIPPER” CASE – REKNOWNED BALTIMORE PSYCHIATRIST TAKEN INTO CUSTODY – AS MANY AS 9 CONFIRMED DEAD, NUMBER EXPECTED TO RISE – “OUR HORROR IS UNIMAGINEABLE” SAYS RIPPER’S COLLEAGUE – WHITE HOUSE TO GIVE STATEMENT AT 9:00 EST -_

One week status post surgery, he wakes up in the middle of a dressing change. The nurse bent over him, her hands smoothing the tape, freezes in place. Will looks at her, eyes frantic and wide and bloodshot, and tries to sit up but his entire torso is crinkling with gauze, padding, bandages, and his panicked breathing racks his chest hard enough to peel the tape back around the edges. The nurse crosses herself, says something in Spanish and calls for the attending, and when he arrives Will is asleep again, bedside monitor singing its steady tune. 

Consciousness prickles slowly back into Will like sensation into a sleeping limb, necessary but unwelcome and painful. Will is buried under layers and layers of numbness and white cotton blankets. 

Someone leaves daffodils and a card on the table at the foot of his bed. He can see them without having to lift his head, the yellow-white petals waiting for him whenever he wakes up. Will is waking up longer and more often these days. The first thing he does is search for the flowers, just to make sure he’s not dreaming anymore - the daffodils are always real. This works to anchor him for a little while, until the daffodils start to wilt and crumple over and he opens his eyes from yet another lucid half-dream to find that someone’s thrown them in the trash with the card still taped to the stems. Housekeeping comes for the garbage before he can find out who left him the card. 

He can’t sleep after that. Flashes of a kitchen, black antlers, a polished resin knife handle stuck inside him, and he wakes up gasping with his arms tight and defensive around himself, the IV in his wrist kinked and setting off an alarm. 

“We can put you in for a psych consult,” one of the night nurses tells him gently, sponging the sweat from his collarbone. 

“I don’t want that,” Will mumbles into his pillow. His eyes are sore from staring at the wall, vigilant against unwanted memories. “Put me to sleep.” _Like a sick dog._

Something goes into his IV drip. He doesn’t dream anymore. 

 

* * *

 

“He’s not testifying.”

Jack Crawford’s voice in a controlled whisper from the hallway.

“Why not let the man make up his own mind?”

“He’s not testifying.”

“Jack, two days and I’ll be done with him. He doesn’t even have to sit up. We go through the –“

“How strong is our case?”

“Well, Jack, I mean, you know where we stand. This was never a question of _will_ Hannibal Lecter go away for a very long time, it’s about whether he gets a hold-hands-sing-Kumbaya sentence or a federal fuck-me-in-the-ass sentence, and I think we both –“

“You know what would make me happy, Richard?”

“What’s that?”

“It would make me very happy if Will Graham could go the rest of his life without anyone giving him a reason to think about Hannibal Lecter ever again. Do you understand?”

“I admire that, Jack, and all, I do, but let’s talk about reality for a second.”

Footsteps.

“Jack, for god’s sake, the guy’s in here on hospital heroin, eating through a tube, and you think me asking a couple questions is gonna upset his fucking equilibrium?”

Will turns over onto his side, covers his ears with his hands until the conversation stops. 

 

* * *

 

Days and nights pass, one after another, as forgettable as breathing in and out. Will is eating solid food and walking without assistance. The IV is gone; Benadryl hushes him to sleep now. Someone has turned his TV to the sports channel while he was asleep. Despite his complete lack of interest in the subject, he hasn't bothered to change it. 

“Why don’t you go ahead and take a shower?” a nurse asks one night, making the rounds. “I’ll go get you some towels.” 

In the bathroom, the harsh fluorescent ceiling lamp makes Will’s head swim. The door drifts shut with a metallic _snick_ , muting all of the hospital’s ambient noise. It occurs to Will that this is the first time he has actually been alone since admission. 

He steadies himself with a hand on the sink, purposely avoiding his reflection in the mirror, and reaches back to loosen the knot on his hospital gown. The blue fabric falls over his shoulders, slips down his waist to the floor. Will is alone and naked in the bathroom. Sudden, sharp fear coalesces behind him – a presence watching him from the places he can’t see, waiting to strike now that he’s vulnerable – and he forces himself to look into the mirror just to confirm that the room is empty. 

His eyes are drawn to the wound. 

Across his stomach is a deep, cavernous purple-red fissure that rises from his pubic hair and curls in a C-shape around his navel, ending a few inches underneath his breastbone. Metallic stitches – more than he can count – knit the borders of his skin together in tight loops. The flesh around the wound is an ugly mottled pink. When he inhales, the stitches ripple along with his chest and fall with the exhale. Will has a sudden image of himself tugging at the sutures, unraveling them until stuffing comes out, like a child’s toy. 

It clicks, then, that this is a part of him now; this is a hole that has been forcibly carved into his own body like so many dead men lying violated in the crime lab, their hearts and lungs and livers plucked from inside of them while they were as alive as he is right now. Men who could have watched the pink, pulsating loops of viscera ripped from their own bellies, cradled them with their hands in shock. Looked up into the same monster’s face and asked him _why. Aren’t I different? Aren’t I special to you?_

Will drops to his knees in front of the toilet and vomits until nothing comes out. 

 

* * *

 

North Memorial Hospital discharges him on a Tuesday. Jack’s car is idling in the patient loading zone out front when Will emerges through the sliding doors with a plastic bag full of discharge medications. Will’s pupils are stinging, adjusting to the natural sunlight and the hot, white glare bouncing off the snow in the parking lot. He had to poke a new hole in his belt to keep his jeans from falling; the denim sags uncomfortably as he walks. 

“Hi,” Jack says. “Hello, Will.” 

Jack has visited nearly every day, pulling up the same plastic chair next to Will’s bed with a cup of coffee and reading the newspaper, staying until he finishes the Sports section and then folding the paper back up. This is the absolute least he can do. If Will wants to say something, he can, is Jack’s rationale. The only time Will acknowledged his presence was to ask him for a ham sandwich on the day they pulled his NG tube. _You’re sure that’s what you want,_ Jack had asked, cautious, _ham sandwich,_ and Will had given him a look that confirmed the question Jack couldn’t ask – the question everyone in the monster’s inner circle had asked themselves in the days after his arraignment – and said very deliberately, _Why wouldn’t I?_ The sound of Will’s voice in that moment frightens him even now. 

“We’ve got a flight leaving out of Minneapolis-St. Paul in 40 minutes,” Jack informs him, sliding his phone into the deep pocket of his trenchcoat. “You’ll be home by eight.”

There’s no reason for Will to say anything on this car ride, so he doesn’t. He can feel the guilt smothering Jack Crawford like a fire blanket, weighing his shoulders down, stifling the air inside the car with a kind of forced silence. Will is aware that, at this point, there are no expectations being placed on him. He can say or do whatever he wants and Jack won’t contest it – his entire bearing seems to be broadcasting the message, _Go ahead, take it out on me. I deserve it._

Will isn’t angry. He isn’t vengeful. He isn’t anything. He feels sorry for Jack, a little, to the small extent that he can empathize with anyone right now. Exhaustion has eaten away at his ability to think and left a dim visor of awareness; his thoughts are leaden, moving so slowly that trying to focus on anything in particular feels like pushing furniture around. Will leans against the passenger side window and, in the airplane heading east, his skull hums with the vibration of the engines beneath them. 

Virginia looks fossilized, abandoned, along the Dulles Toll Road. The houses going by outside the window seem drained of color underneath the snow. Will has driven this same route hundreds of times and none of it seems familiar; a paper ghost town, illusory. He watches through half-lidded eyes as Jack pulls up outside his farmhouse. The gravel crunch rouses him, and he lifts his head. 

“Here we go,” Jack says, already out of his seat. He paces through the snow toward Will’s front porch, hands deep in his pockets, and Will stares at the leather pattern on the dashboard. He’s been sitting in this same position for so long, on the car and on the plane. His body doesn’t want to move. He has to drag his legs over, push himself forward like he’s made of stone, and his fingers clamp painfully in the handle of the bag with his medications. 

Jack is waiting for him at the door, his shoulders hunched up and his jacket collar almost covering his face.

“You need anything,” Jack begins. “I don’t care what, I don’t care when. You call. Understand me?”

Will is rifling through his keys with stiff hands. He gives no indication that he’s heard.

“There’s no reason for you to be alone, Will. You’ve got friends. Just say the word.” 

“What are you afraid of, Jack?” he asks under his breath, almost inaudible.

“I let you down. Left you stranded out there without a tow line. I know that, and it’s not going to happen again.”

The door swings open, and Will drops his keys into the pill bag with a loud rattle. He pauses in the doorway.

“Don’t worry,” he mumbles with his back turned. “I’m not expecting anything from you this time.”

He shuts the door. Jack breathes out in a long sigh, looks down at his shoes, little pieces of slush clinging to the leather. He asks himself what reason he had to expect Will Graham to be grateful. It’s 8:17; Bella’s probably in bed watching Maddow and drinking decaf chai. Two losing battles. He can stay and fight this one, or go home to face the other.

Jack’s car pulls out onto the county road at a quarter to nine. 

Inside, Will is motionless. Shadows from the porch light are coming through the Venetians, making a row of lines on the hardwood. A hushed, funereal aura dampens the sound throughout the house, as if it had gotten used to the silence, used to being empty. The dog bowl by the door still has some food left in it. He nudges it with his foot, and it rattles, but the rest of the house stays silent. All of the beds in front of the fireplace are empty. 

Will sets the bag of pills down on the sofa after a long while. He turns on the hall light and walks into the bathroom. His phone is still on the sink counter where he had left it, a thin layer of dust smudging the display. He taps it on; the battery is dead. 

He drops the phone into the toilet. He plugs in his razor and drags it meticulously across his face until everything is gone, small bristles littering the porcelain sink. He leans forward on the counter with his hands spread flat and listens to his breathing. Beneath his shirt, the sutures are itching. 

Will shuts the light off and walks into the darkness. 

 

* * *

 

Jack kicks the door in five days and 21 unanswered calls later, looking for an explanation, and he finds one. 

Will Graham is sprawled on the living room floor in the same clothes he had worn coming home from the hospital. His legs are twisted awkwardly under him, as though he had fallen and not bothered to get up. A patch of wetness spreads over the front of his jeans. 

Within seconds, Jack has assumed the detached, professional stance of a man who deals with crises for a living. He springs to work as though this were anyone; running through his emergency ABCDE, Jack begins by tilting Will’s head to check for vomit or airway obstruction. Finding none, he bends over to listen for breath sounds, feeling for lung movement with a flat hand over Will’s ribs. Will is breathing in and out, shallow but steady. Jack squeezes his thumb over Will’s wrist and counts in seconds until the color comes back - one, two – then measures a radial pulse. Normal. He could be sleeping, for all Jack knows.

“Will. _Will._ Talk to me.”

He gives it a minute, optimistic. Will doesn’t move. Jack makes a fist, presses his knuckles against Will’s sternum and pushes up, hard, bunching the fabric of his shirt, then down, then up again. His eyelids don’t even flutter. Sternal rub and no hint of a response. 

Jack, outside himself, going through the options, unbuttons Will’s shirt until he can see the wound. It stops him for a moment; Jack has to push aside the immediate image of Will the way he’d found him in Minnesota, knees up on the kitchen floor in a sea of congealed blood, a segment of his small intestine peeking between his fingers, twitching over the side of his stomach. The sutures look tight and the skin around them is clean. No inflammation, no infection. 

“Where are you, Will,” he asks out loud. 

Will’s discharge medications are on the couch. The tamper-proof seals are unbroken; he hasn’t touched them. Jack goes through his cabinets, the shelves in his room. Even the whiskey on his bedside table is unopened. 

Jack calls Alana. The drive from Quantico is short. 

“It’s not an OD,” he tells her in the doorway. “I don’t know what it is.”

Alana stops in place. She touches her hair, and then her hand travels slowly to cover her mouth.

“I’m calling an ambulance,” she says.

“Alana.” Jack’s voice carries the weight of authority and does not open itself to questions. When he uses this tone, people listen. “Look at him first.”

She sits down with her skirt gathered under her knees next to Will, and Jack can see her taking in the scar for the first time, her mouth opening and then closing, knuckles pressed white against the hardwood floor. Alana has been entrenched in her role as expert testimony for the Baltimore DA in the proceedings against Hannibal Lecter; she had told him over the phone, off the record, that there was no possible way she could visit Will at North Memorial without compromising her ability to stay objective for this case. He has reason to believe that one of her conditions for providing testimony stipulated that Will not be involved; Jack respected that enough not to question her absence. This is the kind of professionalism he relies on her for. 

“Will,” she says, voice faltering, and then again, louder this time – “Will. It’s Alana. If you can hear me, you’re safe. Okay?”

Alana pauses for a long moment, apparently deep in thought. She reaches for Will’s wrist and pulls his arm straight up, like a salute, and then lets go. His arm doesn’t fall. It stays rigid in the same position, wavering slightly in midair. 

“Okay.” Alana is nodding to herself. She pushes his arm down gently, and it offers no resistance. Jack watches, silent, as she bends over and raises Will at the waist into a sitting position. His head lolls forward, mouth hanging open by a fraction. A mottled red pattern spreads over his right cheek where it’s been pressed against the floor; his hair is flattened over his scalp. Slowly, Alana withdraws her support from his shoulders. Will continues to sit unassisted, arms limp at his sides. 

“What does that mean?” Jack asks.

She ignores him. “Will, I want you to open your eyes. Open your eyes for me. Can you do that?” 

As if under a trance, his eyelids raise, but there is no hint of recognition in his gaze. His eyes are unfocused, drifting; Jack is so used to his reluctance to make eye contact that this doesn’t seem at all unusual. 

“I’m going to hold your hand now,” Alana says in a quiet, constricted voice, “and I need you to squeeze it for me, okay?”

She laces her fingers through Will’s. Jack waits ten seconds, fifteen, and then Will’s grip begins to tighten, clinging to her hand so solidly that the tendons in his wrist ripple and stand out.

“Now let go,” Alana says. The light catches what could be a tear running down to her chin. Will relaxes his hand in increments, and she slips her fingers free. After a moment, in an almost robotic motion, his hand starts to curl again, grasping at the air and then relaxing, grasping, relaxing. His eyes are dead. Jack is not a god-fearing man, but he hears scripture in the back of his mind, his grandmother’s voice; _He leadeth me beside the still waters, He restoreth my soul …._

“Stroke?” Jack asks out loud without meaning to. 

Alana shakes her head, her mouth drawn tight. 

“Any theories?”

Branches scrape against the walls outside in a sudden breeze, sending a skeletal rattle that echoes in the chimney. Alana stands up suddenly, leaving Will on the floor with his shirt open and his arm out, almost as if beckoning her to come back. Alana’s jaw is set and she looks straight past Jack at the window instead of addressing him. 

“Here’s what we’re going to do, Jack.” Her voice has the clipped, slow cadence that people use when disciplining small children. “I’m going to clean him up and take him to Reston for monitoring overnight. You’re going to call the Cherokee Springs Treatment Center and make sure they have an acute bed open by tomorrow.”

“You think this is mental?” _He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness …_

“I think this is Will needing a lot more than either of us can give him,” and then she’s crying, both hands on her face with her hair coming down over her shoulders. Jack knows then that it’s safe to come up and put his arms around her without being patronizing. 

“I really hate this,” Alana forces out between sobs, buried in his trenchcoat. 

“I know you do,” Jack says. He rests his chin on top of her head and takes in a deep breath.

Behind them, Will closes his eyes.


	2. Chapter 2

The lobby of the Cherokee Springs Treatment Center is unnaturally brightly lit from the ceiling. Colorful banners with construction-paper snowflakes and the words “WINTER WONDERLAND” hang from the reception booth, as if someone actually thought this would cheer people up. The floor in the waiting area is littered with stuffed animals; a plush dolphin mutely observes Jack from one of the chairs. 

Jack has spent six years in Behavioral Science, has seen firsthand the worst examples of human psychopathology, has held a penlight in his teeth during a power outage at North Carolina Central Prison while a serial rapist hurled racial slurs at him until the backup generator came on, and yet this place, with its motivational posters and Disney toys, is making him sick to his stomach. 

He chews a Tums. 

The assessment lasts 30 minutes. Alana tells him this is because Will’s medical records haven’t been faxed over yet and she only knows so much of his history. Someone with a name badge gently steers Will out of the exam room and down the hallway in a wheelchair, his arms limp and jostling as the wheels bump over the doorjamb. This is the detail that Jack will be taking home with him tonight. Guilt, like heartburn, burns in his throat. 

Alana paces, makes followup calls while Jack washes the guilt out of his mouth with cold water from a Dixie cup. Alana is wearing no makeup and her hair is falling out of a loose bun. In this lighting, her face is washed out, all peaks and valleys and shadows. It’s the least composed she’s ever been in his company; Jack feels like an asshole for finding it as off-putting as he does. 

After a while, she stops talking. Jack looks up and she’s staring at her phone with an unreadable expression, the corners of her mouth pinched. 

“They’re saying that Will’s dad died two years ago. Did you know about this, Jack?”

“No,” Jack answers honestly. 

“He never told anyone.” Alana is too exhausted to have more of a reaction. “Isn’t that just like you, Will.”

Jack doesn’t know what else to say. He follows her out of the building and, when the sliding door shuts behind him, crumples the Dixie cup and throws it into a bush. 

 

* * *

 

Will is lying on his back, looking up at the swollen plaster of a ceiling in bad need of repair. The sun’s going down and there’s a storm on, a little wind and some thunder. He listens to the steady noise of rain plinking against metal and he knows, beyond reason, that it’s coming from the carport outside and his old ’85 F150 is parked underneath, that if he were to whistle right now Shep the mutt would come running from his favorite spot on the couch. 

He also knows that Shep died when he was 12 and this house was gutted by hurricane floodwaters seven years ago. This is a dream. 

Will had night terrors as a child, visions of men made out of shadows standing at the foot of his bed and crawling over his body with a phantom weight that made him kick the sheets, screaming for air. The pediatrician told his father it was typical for boys at that age, particularly “special” boys with “a little ways to go before they catch up”. Will overheard this. Out of resentment, he hid the nightmares for years, learning to stifle his fear and anticipate the phantoms before they could catch him off guard; with practice, Will found he could wake up inside his dreams and rearrange them, change the scenery, lay traps for any monsters who crept after him. 

He was in high school before the night terrors stopped coming altogether, in college when he heard the term “lucid dreaming” for the first time. The result of these endless hours strung together in bed, stuck between awareness and dream-state, is a permanent blur between Will’s everyday world and the subconscious world, something he takes for granted until yet another grad student wants to do their thesis on his brain.

Will is thinking about this right now as the roof begins to sag over his head. His arms aren’t moving when he tries to lift them. Water trickles from a tiny point in the bulging plaster, dripping onto his stomach, and it stings once the dampness soaks through his shirt and touches the scar. It occurs to Will that he can’t really call it a scar until it heals. 

Childhood house being destroyed. Leaky ceiling. Can’t move. Common themes of powerlessness, pointing to a loss of stability, feelings of personal weakness. Will has given lectures on this theme before and doesn’t find the imagery very interesting. 

Above him, the ceiling collapses without making a sound. Splintered boards and tar-paper shingles come down on either side of him, a downpour of water spilling onto his face, flooding his nose and eyes. He holds his breath until it tapers off into a slow drip. 

His legs are falling asleep. If he wanted to, Will could wake up right now and come back to his body where he left it on the living room floor. He thinks maybe he would rather stay here, in a puddle surrounded by roofing from a house that doesn’t exist anymore, than face reality. 

There are things inside Will’s mind that exist so far outside his understanding that they seem independent of him, almost self-aware – the native fauna of his internal landscape. Some of them are phantoms from childhood that never left. Others are killers who followed him home long after arrests were made and the cases closed. 

One of them is a stag. 

He can smell it in the room with him right now; he doesn’t have to see it to know it’s there. Will’s heart twists like it’s being wrung out. 

_I thought you were gone._

These aren’t the words he wanted to say. Will is having a hard time breathing. His eyes sting, and he blinks the water out of them. He can see the night sky through the hole in the roof, a starless blur of spent, gray clouds. 

_I know who you are,_ he confesses to it. 

He is thankful not to have a voice in this dream, because his throat is tightening and he doesn’t think he could get the words out. The stag’s breath makes the faint sound of coals hissing in a fire. Will just wants to look at it again, wants to get closer to it – he can’t believe he used to be afraid of it or that there was a time when he didn’t know what it meant – and he forces himself up onto his elbows, half-choking with the physical effort. There’s a question he has to ask and he doesn’t know when he’ll get the chance again.

_You could have killed me -_

The stag turns its head, black eyes glossy and feathers swaying. Will can hardly see it, realizes he’s crying, rubs his eyes clean in a frenzy of emotion. 

_Was I supposed to die?_

The walls are dissolving around them. Will can feel his body prickling awake, legs and arms startled by a rush of blood, a roaring noise surging through his ears – he’s losing the dream, and he tries to shout past the noise loud enough for the stag to hear him, _Was I supposed to die? Are you disappointed?_

Static, overwhelming, blotting out his senses. The static begins to fade. Remnants of dream peel themselves from his mind like gauze. Will breathes in and out, in and out, until the dream is gone. He’s not on the living room floor. He is under a blanket in a bed. No IV, no catheter, but it smells like antiseptic, like nothing specific he can recognize. 

Will opens his eyes. Dim yellow light from somewhere outside the room. White ceiling, white walls. He’s wearing a thin shirt and boxers, both of them his; the fabric is familiar. The sound of snoring emanates from several different sources at varying pitch and volume. There are other people here. A small clutch of fear in his chest. 

“Mr. Graham?”

He lifts his head by a fraction. Standing at his bedside is a diminutive Asian man, older, finely wrinkled, in tortoiseshell glasses and a tie with a print of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. He offers his hand, then lowers it after Will makes no effort to reciprocate. 

“Mr. Graham, I’m Dr. Nguyen. I understand you’re probably a little confused.”

Will’s mouth is very dry. He licks his lips to work up a little moisture, swallows to test his throat out before trying to speak. 

“Is this a mental hospital?” 

“I’d like to think of us more as a turning point in your recovery. Do you mind if I call you Will?”

He swallows again. “Am I under a hold?”

A short pause as the doctor carefully re-drafts his approach.

“A 72-hour hold, that’s right. We can talk about your options with the social worker, but first I’d like to – “

“What did I do?”

He remembers leaving the hospital. He remembers the plane ride, remembers seeing the untouched snow on his porch and the empty bowls. He remembers the stag. A thousand things could have happened in between. He has no one to ask anymore, no one he can trust. 

“You were in a catatonic state, Will. Do you know what that means?” Dr. Nguyen has a high-pitched, gentle voice that implies many years of practice at soothing the unpredictable. “You hadn’t moved or spoken in a while, and you weren’t responding to the events going on around you. Your friends and I wanted to make sure you were in a safe place so your needs could be taken care of, okay? Now, I understand this is a difficult transition for you, but whenever you feel like you’re ready, I’d like to ask you some questions, okay, Will?”

Will stares at the white stucco patterns on the wall, the swirls and bumps and tiny holes. Nearby, a woman grunts in her sleep, then begins to hum an unrecognizable song.

“Will? Are you ready?”

He turns his head in Dr. Nguyen’s direction, but his eyes stay in the same spot, tracing the patterns.

“How long have you been feeling overwhelmed, Will?”

“Is that what I’m feeling?” His voice is very quiet, but the sting of sarcasm comes through. 

“Why don’t you share with me how you’re feeling?”

“I haven’t been,” Will rasps. He clears his throat. His mouth tastes like paint. 

“Haven’t been what?”

“Feeling.”

Dr. Nguyen is holding a clipboard, and this is the first time Will has seen him use it during this conversation. “I’m glad you could share that with me, Will. It’s not uncommon for victims of – “

“I know why.” He sounds his words out slowly, deliberately. “Everybody knows why. I’m not interested in talking to you … or anybody else … about why.”

“That’s just fine, Will.” 

The doctor finishes jotting his notes down in silence. Outside, the woman has stopped humming and has quietly begun to mumble the chorus of “Born in the U.S.A.”

“You’ll meet your assigned psychiatrist tomorrow,” Dr. Nguyen informs him from the doorway. He tilts the door closed until only a small stripe of light is left inside the room. “I’ll let him know what you’ve told me.”

By the time Dr. Nguyen buzzes himself through the secure gate out of the unit, Will is asleep. 

 

* * *

 

Fifty-six miles away, caged inside decaying brick and stone, on a stripped-bare cot under the gnawing fluorescent sheen of Maximum Security, Hannibal Lecter is not asleep but dreaming with his eyes closed, hands folded and motionless on his chest, an island unto himself. 

Hannibal’s deft management of his own consciousness allows him to concentrate on several independent ideas at once, each with full attention devoted; at times they overlap, creating new harmonies, like instruments in an ensemble.

Here is Ruggiero Ricci playing Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnole; here is the covered market of Les Sables d’Olonne, south of the Loire. Here are the contrary flavors of a light Spanish _cava_ paired with confit of lamb shoulder. Here is Will Graham’s face contorted with shock, his mouth fallen open in a plea for air. Here are the verdant banks of the Marne as envisioned by Cézanne. Here is Will’s blood-slick hand extending to seize Hannibal’s wrist. Here is the fabric of Will’s shirt parting neatly with the upstroke of the knife. Here is Will pitching forward, crumpling against Hannibal with a sound like a dog makes when it’s been kicked. Hannibal layers this scene with Lalo’s Symphonie, inhales deeply with pleasure, and replays it from the beginning; as has happened increasingly often since his arrest, he finds the subtler memories are drowned out by the volume of Will Graham’s passion, his tender pain. 

When the orderlies make their morning run past his cell, shouting and banging on the bars in a brusque reveille, Hannibal is smiling.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh dear god I don't know what happened to me - sorry for the delay. this has been entirely plotted out and I’m writing as fast as I can (which is apparently not very fast). more coming soon.


	3. Chapter 3

* * *  
 _“Farewell happy Fields/where Joy for ever dwells; hail horrors, hail/ infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell/receive thy new Possessor: one who brings/A mind not to be chang’d by Place or Time.” - Milton_

* * *

Ward #6 of the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane occupies the entire basement floor and, as such, has no natural lighting. Dawn and dusk are identical except for the frequency of yawns among the swing staff and the strength of their coffee. The unit is kept in a perpetual Alaskan summer by a long row of fluorescent troffers embedded in the ceiling; the still, raisin-like bodies of dead insects speckle the framing. 

Hannibal has been remanded to Ward #6 from the Baltimore County Detention Center after being adjudicated incompetent to stand trial, as evidenced by three attorneys withdrawing from his case in as many weeks. The court order makes reference to his “passively hostile and intimidating affect”, “refusal to enter a plea or acknowledge awareness of the severity of the alleged offenses”, and “significant personality defects preventing counsel from establishing even the most basic working relationship.” 

The county jail, though teeming with an unfortunate and ill-tempered segment of the population, at least had windows. Hannibal’s vision is accustomed to Foscarini blown-glass lumieres and accent lighting; his sensitive eyes itch in protest to the overhead glare. 

On his first, long walk down the corridor that he will come to know, with two armed officers facilitating the transfer, there were tears in his eyes of purely physical origin. He had pressed his lids shut to allow the tears to drain and can recall, vividly, the voices around him at that moment.

Phlegmy and harsh: “Pussy bitch. You’re scared _now_.”

An attempt at singing: “Cry, baby, cry, make your mother sigh …”

One of the officers escorting him: “Plenty of time to cry about what you done in here.”

Pleading, nasal: “I want my applesauce. Please can you ask Maria for my applesauce.”

The lighting in his cell is muted and allows his pupils to adjust at last. From here, Hannibal takes in the environment: a plastic desk surface mounted to the wall with a molded stool for seating, steel bars with a tumbler lock, a combination sink-toilet and a nondescript cot, all of them well-worn artifacts that likely predate the institutional reform of the 1960s. 

Lesser men have been confined to these walls, forced to endure the smell and sound and the _ennui_ of psychiatric incarceration. Hannibal is not a lesser man. Since his youth, he has been building a palace of memory after the Roman fashion; as of today, the palace grounds are sprawling, immense. The road there is well maintained, though little used, as in his former life he had enough pleasure to keep him satisfied in the present without much need for reflection. There is music inside his palace, and more art than the Louvre, rooms that open to snow-covered scenes from his childhood and drawers where the exhilaration of murder is kept. Abigail lives here, as does his sister, both in dark corners. 

After 10:00, Ward #6 sleeps in an enforced silence. Most of the patients are sedated into catlike, 18-hour bedtime routines and barely conscious during the day (or what passes for it in this place). Hannibal, himself, sleeps in silks at the Hotel Residence du Vieux-Port Marseilles and wakes to sunrise over the Charles Bridge in Prague, the warm smell of kolache in his nostrils. 

“Good morning, gentlemen and gentlemen.” 

Clapping hands and off-key whistling interrupt his concentration. The kolache aroma is superceded by wet mold and loose stool. 

“Time to make the donuts, Lecter,” an attendant tells him cheerfully. 

Hannibal takes a moment to let go of Prague, then comes to his feet, in the process discovering a host of small, tender cramps where his joints have been pressed into the unforgiving mattress overnight. His mind may be a fortress, but his body has learned to expect luxury in all things. _O that this too, too solid flesh would melt …_

He allows himself to be ushered into the middle of the corridor as a line forms for breakfast. In his past experience as a consulting forensic psychiatrist, he has referred several patients here and is quietly relieved not to recognize any of them among his neighbors; this is not out of fear of reprisal so much as fear of repetitive conversation. Together, the row of patients trundles upstairs to the secure cafeteria, staff herding them closely through the double doors and up to the buffet counter. 

Breakfast today is Cream of Wheat, an individual container of Frosted Flakes, powdered eggs with a pat of canary-yellow oleomargarine, and a trio of wrinkled sausage links that offend Hannibal on a personal level. He catches the eye of one of the kitchen staff, her hair pulled back in a blue elastic cap, and gives her a wink before she can pull her horrified gaze away. Apparently, his reputation has preceded him. 

Hannibal carries his breakfast to an unoccupied corner table, mindful of the dozen security attendants patrolling the cafeteria perimeter. He lines the tray symmetrically with the edge of the table. It takes a moment before he can bring himself to touch the eggs with his spork; he keeps his nasal passage closed as he swallows to avoid the taste.

“I’m Roland,” says a man already in the process of sitting down across from him. 

Roland is obese and pale with a ring of dark hair receding, Friar Tuck-style, from the bumpy crown of his skull. His blue eyes are held open very wide, as if permanently astonished, and Hannibal catches the faint smell of antifungal lotion mingled with tar shampoo.

“Hello, Roland.”

“Can I ask you a question?” A high-pitched, reedy voice that Hannibal recognizes as having begged for applesauce on his introduction to the unit. Hannibal nods with a slight dip of his head, stirring the hot cereal, and Roland drops his voice to a whisper. 

“Is it true you eat people?”

There are dry lumps in his Cream of Wheat and a hardened crust of something on the bowl, most likely left behind from inadequate washing. Hannibal’s fingers tighten on the spork in revulsion.

“It’s true,” he responds with a sigh.

“I never ate anybody.” Roland squirms closer, leaning in conspiratorially. His stomach pushes up against the edge of the table. “Do they taste different? I mean, men and women?”

“Not especially.”

Hannibal finishes his eggs in three mechanical bites and comes to the decision that breakfast is finished. His companion seems to be mulling the topic over, a wrinkle of concentration across his brow. There are eleven sausage links on his tray, two milk cartons and nothing else. 

“Why don’t you just eat animals?” he asks, as though the provenance of Hannibal’s cuisine and the intent behind its presentation is a question that can be understood this way. 

“We are all animals, Roland,” Hannibal corrects him, “though some of us graze in stranger pastures.” 

Roland frowns, then looks down at the table and busies himself with cutting his sausage into bite-size pieces. 

“If you didn’t want to answer, you could just say so.” The serrated edges of his plastic knife are struggling with the overcooked char of the ground pork; Hannibal watches him work at this for a while and finds his imagination drifting to the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs and the charcuterie where he last enjoyed _boudin noir_ , presumably made from the blood of actual pigs and not pigs-in-deed like his own handcrafted sausage. 

By the time Roland has cleaned his tray, the security attendants are hovering. Hannibal returns to the solitude of his cell, and then, after a brisk walk through the southern gardens of his memory palace, to France. Stretching supine on his cot, he lets the sound of waves lead him back to Marseille and the Old Port with its fleet of super-yachts. He wonders what Will would make of them. He pictures the curl of Will’s mouth around a spoon of _tarte aux pommes_ from Les Café des Epices. He imagines pouring Will’s blood into a base of guanciale and sweated onions and finds the concept so pleasant that his pulse begins to stir. Hannibal’s thoughts proceed along these lines, darting down slightly more vulgar avenues ( _the red chasm of Will’s skin separating beneath a sternal saw, pink froth from his parted lips_ ) until again interrupted by the announcements of the staff. 

“Therapy group! Y’all’s favorite – get ready.” 

“Therapy group” is apparently held at noon every Tuesday and Thursday. On paper, this is a service provided to the patients of Ward #6 to help educate and empower them to take control of their mental disease. In practice, therapy group is an empty room with coloring books and crayons stacked on the table and an anxious MFT graduate student reading from a printout. 

Of the patients accompanying Hannibal, four are asleep in their chairs, one is self-stimulating by bobbing his head up and down repeatedly, and one is Roland, who smiles and waves, the dimples in his round face like thumbprints in dough. Hannibal nods briefly in acknowledgement. He has one objective for attending this group, and a cursory glance confirms it – there are books here, lying haphazardly on a shelf against the back wall, faded paperbacks most likely donated by a well-meaning Rotary Club. Ignoring the therapist’s prattle, he combs through the selection: Bibles translated into Spanish and Vietnamese, Louis L’amour Westerns, Jodi Picoult, several copies of “The Secret”. 

“Did you know that your name rhymes with cannibal?” Roland whispers into his ear from a few inches away. The antifungal odor accompanies him. 

Hannibal locates an older edition of Butler’s ‘Lives of the Saints’ and pauses for a moment, still and contemplative, as connections begin to fall into place. 

“It hadn’t occurred to me,” he responds eventually, lost in thought. 

“That’s pretty funny, huh?”

“I suppose it is.”

“So aren’t you a psychiatrist?”

“Presumably,” Hannibal murmurs, tracing a finger along the calendar of saints, “I am no longer licensed by the state of Maryland.”

“Do you think I could ask you about some stuff?” 

Upon locating St. Teresa of Ávila, he shuts the book and slides it under his shoulder. 

“Roland, if I were your doctor, I would suggest that you attend to our group instructor and her antiquated insights into Linehan’s dialectic model instead of your fellow patients.”

“Okay,” Roland answers with genuine contrition, dropping his head. “Sorry to be a pest.”

For the rest of the afternoon and long into the night, Hannibal is consumed by inspiration; the crayons from therapy group become subtle instruments in his hands, communicating the elusive image in his mind to a sheet of butcher paper until he can make out the angel in the marble. When he finally sleeps, Butler’s book of saints is left open on the desk and the crayons’ tips are worn down to their labels. He holds the smell of Will Graham close to him, stored away in his palace – Old Spice, cotton, a buildup of lactic acid from perspiration, dearer to him than a thousand memories. 

This morning, there is a difference in routine. Hannibal is roused from sleep not with a fanfare from the attendants but with Dr. Frederick Chilton on a folding chair outside his cell. 

“I know you’re awake,” Chilton says in an acid tone, “so don’t play coy with me.”

Hannibal breathes in very deeply. He turns his head two inches toward the door; the rest of his body remains still.

“How is your gut coming along?” he asks after a moment. “From the smell, I’d say your intestinal flora are certainly proliferating.”

Chilton ignores this. “Had I been informed of your transfer earlier, my _diligent_ staff would have been aware of the protocols we’re putting in place for you. Incidentally, how did you like the cafeteria? You won’t be seeing it again.”

“Your second-rate Ripper left enough of your bowel for the surgeons to anastomose,” Hannibal observes. “I wouldn’t have done that.”

A tremor of anger runs through Chilton’s jaw. He leans forward with his elbows on his knees. 

“Frankly,” he says in a pinched voice, “I’m looking forward to you delivering more of those _bon mots_ , as I have a NIMH grant proposal in the works and I’ll owe it all to the Ripper’s fascinating insights into human depravity. Which is allowing that you’re even human in any sociological sense of the word.”

Hannibal’s interest in this conversation is limited only to the pleasure derived from annoying him. “When you pass your first straining stool after your colostomy takedown, promise you’ll think of me and not that charlatan.”

“Charming. Although that boasting may not be entirely warranted. Your last victim has made out embarrassingly well – physically, anyhow.” Chilton makes a show of leaning back in his chair, stretching his arms out and cracking his knuckles in an attempt at looking aloof. “The monkeys at Cherokee Springs have their hands on Will Graham now,” he sighs, “and the entire field of forensic psychiatry is worse off for it.”

A note plays in the chamber orchestra of Hannibal’s mind – something like a C minor – at the mention of Will’s name and location. 

“What I would give for the package deal,” Chilton continues. “The two of you degenerates together. You’d be my Anna O., and Will could be my …. Little Hans.”

The solitary note continues to reverberate. Hannibal turns away and shuts his eyes in order to capture it. “Have your catheter exchanged,” he offers as a parting note. “You reek of Klebsiella.”

Today, his meals are brought to him on the unit. He chooses to abstain. 

 

* * *

 

_Yes, they’ll all come to see me_  
 _Arms reaching, smiling sweetly_  
 _It’s so good to touch the green, green grass of home …."_  


A record playing on an old stereo. Crackle of catfish on the stove. Will at the table and his father in waders, smiling. 

“You wash your hands?” his father asks.

Will holds out his pink-scrubbed palms, then turns them over.

“All right.” 

Cars passing by outside, dry crunch of gravel. Will’s right arm is being lifted into the air somehow. A pinch on his finger and pressure around his bicep, squeezing, pulling tighter. 

“One-ten over eighty, pulse seventy-six,” says his father, turning the catfish with a fork. Oil hisses and splatters. 

His vision is starting to blur. “What?”

Sound of Velcro ripping, and with a roller-coaster lurch, the dream falls away. Will opens his eyes to a nursing cart next to his bed, plastic cords and LED displays. 

“Morning, honey.” A woman in floral scrubs and multiple lanyards bends down to take the pulse oximeter from his finger. Vague sunlight filters through the security window behind his bed, tinting the walls yellow, making him squint. He rubs his eyelids hard enough to see spots.

“Breakfast’s at nine,” she tells him, patting his arm familiarly. “You can head on over and watch some TV in the group room ‘til they call.”

Will is not prepared for this. He has a sudden image of himself at a table boxed in by strangers, unpredictable and mentally ill, pressing up against him with their elbows rubbing into his ribs, silverware clanging and chewing right in his ear, asking who he is, where he came from, why he isn’t talking. 

“Can I stay here?” he asks, breathing unsteadily. 

“’Course you can, honey.” She rolls her cart out into the hallway. “Change your mind, you just tell somebody.”

The pillowcase is vinyl and clings to his cheek when he rolls over, pulling away with a wet sound. Will brings his knees up and sleeps on his side like a child, one arm cradled protectively over his stitches.

 

* * *

 

He has no idea what time it is when he wakes up again. A male staff member is jostling his shoulder to get his attention. 

“Someone here to see you.” 

Sudden, unfiltered panic. His lungs contract; static in his brain. 

“Who – “

“I think her name’s Alana? She’s over in the visitor’s lounge.”

It takes a second to die down, his body unclenching in increments. Will doesn’t know where the adrenaline came from. He sits up slowly, waiting for his head to adjust to a new posture besides flat and horizontal, blood throbbing in his temples like a bass drum. Standing is a process that requires one hand on the headboard and the staff member pulling him up by his other arm, testing out his legs until he’s somewhat sure they won’t buckle underneath him. 

“You maybe want to do some morning hygiene first?” The staff hands Will his jeans and shirt, which have apparently been lying on the floor this entire time. “Brush your teeth or something?”

“She doesn’t care,” Will mutters, zipping himself up. 

The lounge is a cramped little room with two tables, cheap stacking chairs and a glowing Coke machine against the back wall. It smells like citrus-scented floor cleaner. Alana is holding a paper grocery bag and sets it down when she sees him.

“You got about ten minutes until time’s up,” the staff informs him, fiddling with his phone. “I’ll be outside, long as you don’t go starting trouble.”

When the door clicks shut, neither of them says anything. Alana is doing something nervous with her hands, locking her fingers together and then unlocking them. He waits for her to break the silence; it feels safer to follow her lead when he has no idea where this conversation could go. 

She inhales, as if gathering herself together. “You look pretty good, Will.”

“You look … normal,” he says after a long pause, unable to come up with anything better, and Alana snorts out a laugh, her decorum already gone. 

“I’m going to take that as a compliment.” 

Her emotions are very bright, painted in primary colors; Will has always felt comfortable around them. He finds himself smiling just because she is, without any real feeling behind it. Alana pulls out a chair and gestures for him to do likewise, and he does. 

“I wanted to bring you some of your clothes,” she says, reaching behind her for the paper bag. “These are just the ones I could remember seeing you in the most. They’re clean,” she adds for some reason.

Embarrassment leaks into his voice. “You went through my closet?”

“Nothing there I haven’t seen before. Anyway, I brought some boxers, too, figured you’d need those.”

“Jesus,” Will says under his breath. 

“Will, we’re both adults. I just want you to be comfortable, and I know that’s tough for you in a new environment.”

She reaches out and lays a hand on his knee. They sit in silence again for a little while. Outside the building, the sound of dumpsters being emptied, aluminum cans rattling. 

“Will, Dr. Nguyen and I want you to stay here for the full sixty days,” she tells him softly. “It’s going to take time to process what you’ve been through, and I really think you need to be in a safe, stable place right now.”

He mouths the word “stable” to himself. Alana squeezes his knee.

“I know you, and I know you don’t like to ask for help, so I’m asking for you.”

“Apparently, you know me so well,” Will mumbles. His eyes comb over the floor, follow the grooves in the linoleum. “Did you know what I needed when you thought I was a murderer?”

Alana withdraws her hand.

“That’s uncalled for.” A quaver in her voice. “We were trying to protect you.”

“Thank you for the clothes.”

Implicit in his tone is the fact that he’s done talking. He takes the paper bag without looking at it or Alana and listens to her breathe in deeply through her nose.

“If it’s easier to blame me for this than to blame Hannibal Lecter – “

A sensation of weightlessness, falling, at the sound of the name. Will steadies himself with one hand on the side of his chair, white-knuckled. His next breath comes in uneven.

“- then I accept that responsibility. And maybe we can talk about this some more once you’ve had a chance to –“

_“Stabilize?”_

That word has a private meaning between the two of them. It had a little promise once, a little optimism when they said it to each other. This is her vulnerable spot, and Will wants to use it to make her hurt. He wants Alana to feel guilty and he doesn’t know why. 

“You know, you have every right to feel how you’re feeling right now,” Alana says in a clipped tone, rising to her feet. He can feel the frustration pouring off of her in waves. “I wish you all the best.”

Will stays in the empty lounge with his bag of clothes until the staff member opens the door.

 

* * *

 

An envelope on his pillow.

“That came for you in the mail,” the night staff tells him, shrugging. “It’s open, but we don’t read it. We just shake it out to make sure there’s no contraband.”

“Okay,” Will says blankly. 

He sits on the edge of the bed and examines the envelope. His name and the address for Cherokee Springs are written out in a nondescript hand. The postmark is from Raleigh, North Carolina. He slides the paper out, unfolds it, starts to read. 

_Will,_

Hannibal wrote this. A sudden, unsteady sensation, like his body is a ship listing hard to port. He looks up immediately, terrified that someone is watching this and waiting to see what he’ll do, but the hallway is empty. His heart is shivering in his chest.

_I received the news of your recent commitment with some concern. Cherokee Springs is far from the vanguard of understanding conditions like yours, let alone aiding in their treatment._

_How long has it been since last we spoke? Your sutures must be dissolving by now. Please take care not to pull at them prematurely or you’ll risk damaging the cosmetic result._

_You will hear a great many things about me in the coming days. Weigh them against what you know in your heart – your analysis should spare nothing. This applies as well to the pablum and poison your doctors are no doubt attempting to inculcate in your psyche. It pains me to think of your insight under the yoke of these Philistines._

_In circumstances like ours, Will, it’s often tempting to draw on the religious and familiar. When you were a boy in Catholic school, engrossed in your saints, had you come across the tale of dear Teresa of Ávila and her encounter with the angel? I think you may find this passage relevant._

Hannibal, at this point, has switched to a red pen and appears to have traced over each letter several times to deepen the color: 

_“… I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron’s point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain that I could not wish to be rid of it … I wished to see or speak to no one but only to cherish my pain, which was to me a greater bliss than all created things could give me.”_

Will’s hands are shaking. His thumb is bloodless where it grasps the paper. 

_Will._

_Of the two things I said to you before removing the knife, only one was untrue._

_\- Hannibal Lecter_

_P.S. – You are within your rights to keep our correspondence private. If challenged on this point, do consult your patient handbook._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi, my name is stelladown and I am THE SLOWEST WRITER IN RECORDED HISTORY.


End file.
